


Someone tell Nico he isn't scary

by xogray



Series: solangelo oneshots [3]
Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comfort, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-The Heroes of Olympus, Pre-The Trials of Apollo, Sad Nico di Angelo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xogray/pseuds/xogray
Summary: “Don’t bullshit me, Will. People don’t like me. It’s as simple as that.”Will squared his shoulders. This aspect of Will had always surprised Nico. For someone who seemed so sunshine-and-rainbows, Will Solace didn’t back down from a fight.“Stop it,” Will said simply, but Nico could hear the underlying anger in his voice. “People do like you. You just don’t allow yourself to accept it becauseyoudon’t like you.”“Who?” Nico asked, stepping forward. “Tell me. Go ahead, give me the long list of names of the people just waiting to be my best friend.”
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Series: solangelo oneshots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933870
Comments: 4
Kudos: 206





	Someone tell Nico he isn't scary

Sometimes, Nico wished he wasn’t so observant. He wished he could be blissfully ignorant to some of the looks he got from other campers. Normally, he could ignore it. But today had been a long one and really, he wasn’t having it anymore.

He was sitting at the Apollo table for dinner, shoulder to shoulder with Will Solace like he always did. But today had just not been his day so he wasn’t listening to the conversation going on in the slightest. Instead, he caught a girl from a few tables over looking him up and down. It wasn’t until she met his gaze and immediately turned away that he realized she was scared of him. She was analyzing him as if to see just how bad he was. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. He got up from the table, catching a few campers’ attention but mainly Will’s, whose eyes immediately snapped up. 

“I'm gonna head to my cabin early,” Nico said quietly. That was enough of an explanation for everyone else, but Will eyed him suspiciously. 

“You okay?” he asked. Nico couldn’t meet his eyes as he nodded. 

“Just tired,” he muttered, turning away without another word and walking towards the edge of the dining pavilion. He passed by one of the columns and used the shadow it cast on the ground to shadow-travel to his cabin. 

He stood in the middle of the room for a moment, his body suddenly a little more sluggish from the energy it took to shadow jump, before pulling out the small black backpack he had under his bed. He didn’t have much, but a few changes of clothes always sufficed when he used to travel from Camp Half-Blood to Camp Jupiter. He began stuffing black jeans and t-shirts into the bag haphazardly. The memory of the brief fear in the girl’s eyes kept showing up in his mind. 

He hadn’t exactly lied to Will. He _was_ tired. He was exhausted. He was so tired of people skirting around him, acting like if they breathed too loudly near him, the ground would swallow them whole. He was so tired of the looks he received everywhere he went, like they were expecting an army of skeletons to appear any moment and attack. Nico was exhausted from feeling like he didn’t belong here so he figured it would be easier for everyone if he left. Maybe he would stay with Hazel at Camp Jupiter. That way he wouldn’t be the only child of the underworld there. 

He was almost done packing when a loud knock sounded at the door. “Nico?”

Will Solace. Nico sighed. Out of everyone at camp, Will had done the most to make Nico feel welcomed. And each day, Nico wondered why. He wondered when Will would stop pitying him. 

“Nico?” Will called again, this time not knocking. Instead, he pushed the door open and stepped inside. He looked from Nico to the black bag sitting on the bed and he frowned, putting the pieces together. “What… are you doing?”

“Leaving,” Nico replied, zipping up the bag. Will walked further into the cabin. 

“Why?” he asked. Nico rolled his eyes. Will’s voice was so curious and… sad? “What happened?”

“People here are scared of me, Will. I’m tired of it,” Nico replied quietly. Once again, he couldn’t meet his eyes. 

Will scoffed. “No one is scared of you, Nico. You’re not that scary.”

Anger flared up in Nico. He spun around. The calm look on Will’s face only made him angrier. 

“You don’t get it, Sunshine,” he spat. “I've seen the way people look at me. I’ve seen the way people avoid me. You don’t get it because you don’t experience that. Because everyone likes you.”

Will’s eyes softened. “Nico,” he said, “no one dislikes you. A lot of people are intimidated by you, but that doesn’t mean they dislike you. And yeah, I'm sure there are people who are scared of you but I'm certain those people just don’t _know_ you. Because if they knew you, they’d know you aren’t scary.”

Nico glared at Will. “Don’t bullshit me, Will. People don’t like me. It’s as simple as that.”

Will squared his shoulders. This aspect of Will had always surprised Nico. For someone who seemed so sunshine-and-rainbows, Will Solace didn’t back down from a fight. Even one with Nico, who no one else dared to disagree with. 

“Stop it,” Will said simply, but Nico could hear the underlying anger in his voice. “People do like you. You just don’t allow yourself to accept it because _you_ don’t like you.”

“Who?” Nico asked, stepping forward. “Tell me. Go ahead, give me the long list of names of the people just waiting to be my best friend.”

Will’s blue eyes looked darker in the dim cabin as he rolled them. “Percy, Annabeth, Leo, Jason, and Piper are your friends. So are Frank and Hazel, even if they’re at Camp Jupiter. Reyna is your friend. My siblings like you. Miranda, Sherman, Harley, Ellis, they all like you. You have friends, Nico.”

Nico wondered if it was an accident that Will didn’t include his own name. Maybe Nico was supposed to assume he was included. Or maybe Will was finally running out of pity for him. Regardless, Nico bit his tongue. He wasn’t gonna draw attention to Will omitting his name. But he would admit to himself that it hurt a little. While he may not have been surprised Will pitied him, it hurt. He’d begun to hope that maybe, just maybe, Will did like him. Because despite being him the literal embodiment of sunshine and the complete opposite of Nico in every way, Nico had begun to _like_ Will. No matter how hard he tried not to. 

“Aside from maybe Hazel and Jason, they all tolerate me, at best. None of them are really trying to be friends with me because none of them _want_ to go out of their way to care about me. People tolerate me, Will. They don’t like me,” he said. Will looked angry and exhausted. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, or a version of it at least, but it was the first time since the war with Gaea that Nico had been set on leaving camp. 

“People like you, Nico,” he grumbled. Nico stepped closer and glared up at him. 

“No, they don’t,” he replied. Will was holding something back and it made Nico anxious but he pushed anyway. “I don’t have _friends_ here.”

Will took a deep breath and stepped closer one more time. Their toes were an inch apart. If they had been this close in any other context, Nico’s heart might’ve sped up or even skipped a beat. But right now, he was angry and upset and tired. 

“People like you,” Will repeated. Nico searched his dark blue eyes. 

“Who?” Nico asked firmly. “ _Who_ likes me?”

Will didn’t reply. At least, not with words. Instead, he placed his hands on Nico’s cheeks and pulled him forward into a kiss. Nico’s entire body tensed up at the contact. And sure, maybe he had thought about this happening. _Maybe_ he had imagined it in his head before. But he’d never expected it to happen. He’d never expected to even have the opportunity for it to happen. But it was happening now and he was wildly unprepared for it.

it didn’t last long. Maybe because Will felt how tense Nico was, or maybe he just knew Nico wouldn’t have been able to handle contact like that for much longer. He didn’t pull away completely though. He kept his hands where they were and pressed his forehead against Nico’s gently. His touches now were so light and careful, like he didn’t want to overwhelm Nico. 

“I like you,” he said quietly. 

Nico’s brain was short-circuiting as he tried to process the last 15 seconds. His breathing was uneven, his hands were shaky, and he didn’t remember closing his eyes, but they were closed. Will was so incredibly close and it was messing with Nico’s head. 

He wasn’t sure how long had passed before Will whispered, “Nico.”

Nico opened his eyes and found Will’s dark blue ones closer than they’d ever been. They stared at each other for a moment before Will straightened his back, standing upright. 

Will carefully retracted his hands and Nico already missed the feeling of them. “I'm sorry if I shouldn’t have done that,” he said gently. “but I meant it. I do like you. Um… a lot.”

With Will’s touch gone now, Nico found it a little easier to focus. “I, um,” Nico muttered. “I like you too.” The words slipped out before he could stop them. But when Will smiled softly at him, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret saying them. Nico broke eye contact. “People are still scared of me though, Will. That won’t change.”

“Hey, Death Boy,” Nico’s eyes snapped up at the nickname and Will just laughed at his glare before continuing, “I told you. Anyone who’s scared of you doesn’t know you. Everyone else is just intimidated by you. But that doesn’t mean they don’t like you. Think about, like… Annabeth. She’s insanely intimidating and even a little scary. But people don’t dislike her. It’s the same for you.”

Nico considered this silently. When he’d met Annabeth, he’d been almost eleven, she was fourteen. Even then, she had been very intense and a little scary. Then, she'd hurled herself off a cliff, making her seem insanely brave and maybe a tiny bit stupid. Since then though, anytime he’d been around her, he could understand why people were intimidated by her. She was an intimidating person. But Nico still liked her. Most campers did.

Nico nodded. “I'm not Annabeth, though,” he muttered. Will smiled. 

“No,” he replied. “You’re not. But you can be intimidating like she can. And that doesn’t make you unlikable. It just means people have to get past the scary looking exterior to see how good you really are.”

“I'm not good, Will,” he said without hesitation, looking down at his feet. “I've got a lot of baggage. I’ve done and seen terrible things. I’m not good.” Nico briefly remembered his time in Tartarus. All the monsters he fought, the visions he saw, the anger he felt. The memory made his breath stutter in his chest. 

“Everyone has bad parts,” Will said gently. He pressed one knuckle under Nico’s chin and lifted his head to make eye contact with him. “Even the best people have bad parts. And yeah, maybe your bad parts are really bad. That doesn’t make you a bad person, Nico.”

Nico bit his lip, mulling over Will’s words and doing his best to believe him. He didn’t believe he was good. Nico had hurt too many people to be a good person. But maybe he could try to believe he wasn’t completely bad. 

He lifted one hand and placed it on Will’s upper arm to steady himself as he stood up on his toes and gently, so gently, pressed their lips together. Will kept his knuckle under Nico’s chin and moved his thumb up to hold it too, effectively keeping a gentle grip on his jaw. Nico held the kiss for a few seconds before slowly flattening his feet on the ground. Will’s smile was radiant and it made Nico want to kiss him again and again. But his limit for how much contact he could handle right now was reaching capacity so he dropped his hand and pulled away from Will’s light grasp on his face. 

“So,” Nico said, “you think I have a _scary looking exterior?”_ he asked, using air quotes around the last three words. Will laughed and Nico thought he was beautiful. 

“Objectively, you look a little intimidating. I’ve never been scared of you but based on looks alone, you could maybe scare a small child.”

Nico almost smiled.

“How do you suppose I fix that? Less black? Should I start wearing one of those painfully bright orange camp shirts?” he asked. 

Will chuckled and reached forward to gently run his forefinger and thumb along one side of the zipper on Nico’s black bomber jacket. “Hm, I don’t know about that,” Will said quietly, his eyes flicking up to Nico’s, “I think you look good in all black.”


End file.
